


Opening Doors

by MadMissMim



Series: Full Circle [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Daddy Issues, Demons, Smidge of Violence and Very Very Slight Gore - Freeform, Supernatural Elements, creepy houses, p.i. - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 07:05:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10962189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadMissMim/pseuds/MadMissMim
Summary: Caleb Hill is a P.I. who takes the cases nobody else can be bothered to take, the clients that no one else is willing to believe. More often than not, those cases involve the things that go bump in the night - but this case may lead him to something that does quite a bit more than "bump". Good thing he's got an ace up his sleeve . . .





	Opening Doors

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many, many years ago, I was a regular at a crappy little hole-in-the-wall ma and pop greasy spoon diner, and I was well known for sitting in a corner of the diner for hours on end scribbling in notebooks. This place was the sort of diner where complete strangers have been known to idly chat with one another, and regulars greeted each other like old friends. All my fellow regulars and newly met strangers knew I was writer, and the question they always asked was if they could read something I wrote. Sadly, my small collection of tried-and-true friends harassed me about it too. My personal policy is to never ever let somebody read my unfinished novels, so I came up with a solution. In answer to their demands I composed a series of short stories, of which this is the first, so that when they asked to read something I could hand something over with a clear conscience. The plots a bit tired and overly done, but the characters are fun, and it's written mostly in my native language - sarcasm LOL. I'm posting these stories here on AO3 also due to the harassment of my contemporaries -_- . So, here it is, Naggy McWhinerson! I'll post the rest of them later when I get a chance (and before you ask you mean little pocket pet, I still haven't finished the fifth or sixth one, so ask again at your peril - unless you have cookies; standard bribery rates apply). For everybody else out there, I hope you enjoy the stories! They were actually surprisingly fun to write, and really my first sincere effort at first person POV.

      Walking down a dark country road in the middle of the night, it’s easy to understand the superstitious fears of the middle ages. When the moon declines to light the way and the stars are smothered by thick clouds, the darkness becomes a tangible thing breathing down your neck with the promise of lurking monsters. The darkness whispers across your skin with fingers made of chill wind. Tree shadows, a deeper blackness in the already dark night, sway and dance and contort into nightmare configurations. Nonexistent creatures skitter across the ground, straining toward you with hungry talons, only to vanish as soon as you turn to look. Visceral fear spurs you to greater speed, not quite running but too frightened to casually amble.

      I found myself in that place with a terror passed down by the cave men nipping at my heels. Most people can comfort themselves with the knowledge that what they fear of the night is only in their mind, safe in a reality that holds no real monsters but the human kind. I, on the other hand, know better. The things that go bump in the night aren’t all children’s stories that melt like mist with the sunrise. Some of them are very real; real enough to be lethal. I’ve seen them all, from the horrifying to the ridiculous, and unlike most in my position I have survived every meeting with the otherworldly unscathed – well, mostly unscathed . . . sort of.

      A night bird screamed somewhere beyond the dark wall of the tree line, a terrible mockery of a human voice crying out in agony. I again quickened my pace with a silent prayer to the fates. Normally, I would say that the night holds no surprises for me. It’s familiar, like a favorite blanket age-softened and comfortable; but on a night like that night, all bets were off.

      There was a flashlight in the car I had abandoned a mile or so back. Unfortunately, the flashlight was as dead as the car. Flashlight batteries are just one of those things you only remember to replace when it’s too late. Mostly because you don’t give much thought to a flashlight until you need it and discover it no longer works. You would think in my line of work I would pay more attention to things like that, as often as I’ve needed to go poking around in the dark of night. It’s just another case of Murphy’s Law, I suppose. If I ever met Murphy, I don’t know if I’d shake his hand or shoot him. It’s a good chance I’d do both. Ah Murphy, the mythical man with his finger on the perverse pulse of the universe. Then there’s me, Caleb Hill, the man with his finger on Murphy’s lightning rod. I had no doubt in my mind that Murphy’s Law was to blame for the necessity of slogging along on the grass-choked shoulder of a nightmare-dark road.

      I started this little walk in the hopes of finding a gas station or a pay phone, but the longer I walked the more willing I was to settle for just finding a streetlight. At this point I again started asking myself what I was doing in the backwoods of nowhere. Then I remembered why, and cursed my personal code of ethics that kept nagging about letting down a client. I had yet to let down a client, and I wasn’t about to start with Miss Indira Saski. Besides, she was cute and she’d paid in advance – always a plus in my book.

      I’m a detective, cheesy as that sounds. Generally, when I tell people about my profession they immediately start rattling off names like Dick Tracy and Sam Spade and a whole horde of other famous fictional private-eyes. To my credit, I’m not like any of those jokers – which people are also quick to point out. I don’t wear a low-brimmed fedora like those guys in the movies. In fact, the only hat I own is a beat-up Red Sox hat my stepdad gave me when I was a kid – I just have the wrong kind of ears for hats. I have three jackets to my name but none of them are trench coats, beige or otherwise. I don’t have a gum-chewing, nail-filing secretary either. What I do have is Catherine Cavanaugh.

      Catherine Cavanaugh, better known as Charlie to anyone who doesn’t want to get a fist in the nose, is a master of the secretarial arts. Heaven only knows what she’s doing working for me. I met her while she was down and out after a bad relationship had left her broke and desperate. She’s been a loyal, if smart-mouthed, employee ever since. I asked her once, out of morbid curiosity, why she insisted on being called Charlie. At the time she had been knocking back whiskey sours like the world was running out of whiskey, so she was more than happy to share the story. Unfortunately, I had been putting a dent in the bar’s supply of bourbon so she may as well have kept her mouth shut. The result would have been the same.

      Charlie was the one who brought Indira Saski to the office. She met Indira at a bar where the poor woman was trying to drown her sorrows, and Charlie had known right away that Indira was my kind of client. As I listened to Indira’s story, I had to agree. Indira was convinced that someone was trying to scare her away from the property she’d just bought. Although a plot like that belongs in Saturday morning cartoons rather than reality, she could think of no other explanation. The strange sounds in the night and the property damage that kept reappearing no matter how many times she fixed it just didn’t make sense otherwise – to her anyway. I could understand why she was worried. It’s an expensive old house and the purchase of something so pricy is not to be taken lightly. Being in a constant state of broke myself, there’s nothing that can pull my heartstrings quite like somebody being forced to flush money down the toilet.  

      She’d tried to hire others before me, but nobody else believed her. They naturally assumed she was a crackpot. She did finally manage to find one P.I. to listen to her, but he got spooked while investigating the property. It’s lucky for her that Charlie found her – lucky for Charlie and me too, seeing as how the rent on the office was a little on the overdue side. However, even if she hadn’t paid in advance, I still would have taken her case. That’s what I do. I take the cases no one else wants and believe the stories no one else believes. It’s like I said before, I know what really goes bump in the night.

      A glimmer of dull light came into view, at last. As I got nearer to the light I could finally see around the thick screen of trees to behold a gas station. I half-expected to hear heavenly choirs singing as soon as I saw it. It was one of those moments that almost demands sound effects. My rejoicing flattened a little upon discovering that the gas station was closed, but I perked up when I saw that the pay phone was outside. Not only that, but it was a working pay phone – would wonders never cease? Digging change out of the deep pockets of my jacket, I dialed Charlie’s cell phone number. Charlie answered just when the seemingly endless ringing was about to toss me into panic.

      “Who’s this and what the hell do you want at 1 a.m.?” asked Charlie in sleepy irritation.

      “It’s me, Charlie,” I replied.

      “And who are you when you’re at home?” asked Charlie, followed by a loud yawn.

      “It’s Caleb,” I answered, mildly insulted that she hadn’t recognized my voice.

      “Oh, what’s up boss man? How’d the meeting go?”

      “Better than I had hoped, but not as well as I’d like,” I told her, then let out a long sigh. “Listen, my car died out here on the farm road and I need a ride.”

      “Sure thing,” said Charlie with another yawn. I gave her the client’s address and told her where I was in relation to Indira’s house. Charlie took it all down, repeated it back to me to be sure she had it right then hung up.

      With nothing left to do but wait, I found myself a likely spot just inside of the circle of light cast by the lonely streetlamp and hunkered down. For a little while I was able to amuse myself by skipping pebbles across the road like it was a pond. I heard a tinkling sound, like falling wind chimes, in the bushes to my left. Turning to look, I dropped my pebble to the ground and silently prayed I wasn’t in for an ambush.

      “What are you doing way out here?” asked a very high-pitched male voice. It was like the voice of a cartoon chipmunk or some such. It took everything I had not to smirk.

      “I’m waiting for my ride,” I answered with a shrug. “What are _you_ doing way out here?”

      The sprite stepped out of hiding and looked up at me. He had to lean back until he was almost falling over to look at my face. It’s one of the many disadvantages of only being three inches tall. “I asked first,” the sprite said, sounding distinctly grumpy.

      “Is that you Robbie?” I asked, leaning down to peer more closely at him. It was indeed Robbie, though that wasn’t his real name. I’d recognize those clan markings anywhere. “I’m out here on a case, not that it’s any of your business.”

      “No need to get snippy,” huffed Robbie. “I just wondered because I heard some bad things about this area. I came out here to visit family and they said something bad’s been thumping about.”

      “Did they now?” I said, intrigued. “I wonder if the something bad your family’s complaining about is in any way connected to the something bad I’m investigating.”

      “Mayhap, mayhap not,” said Robbie with a really deep shrug for such tiny shoulders. “When I saw you sitting here I started to think _you_ were the something bad.”

      I wanted to be offended, but, to be honest, I had no right. Technically, I am something bad. There’s no hiding the truth of what I am from most supernatural creatures, although only humans with the talent to see such things know I’m anything but what I appear to be. I don’t make a habit of telling people either, nor do I show my true face. Everybody wears masks, keeping their true selves secret, but those masks are only metaphorical. The mask I wear, however, is very real. My secret face, my hidden face, would scare most people out of their wits. My secret face is the result of the demon blood passed to me by my father. That’s right, dad was an honest-to-goodness demon. His blood is the source of all of my more unusual talents, and all of my worst fears. Nothing scares me more than the thought that one day I could lose control and become the kind of monster I spend all my time hunting down. So I keep my true self hidden beneath the appearance of normalcy and use my talents only when I absolutely have to.

      In order to keep my secret, I have to avoid letting people get too close to me and I have to carefully watch everything I do. I don’t even eat meat, for Pete’s sake! There are a few people who know I have special talents, but most of them just think I’m psychic, or maybe psycho. Charlie knows about my talents, but she doesn’t have the first clue where they come from and it’ll stay that way if I have anything to say about it. She also knows that there are deeper reasons behind my insistence on helping people, but Charlie, being Charlie, doesn’t ask – just like, I don’t ask Charlie why she’s scared of the dark.

      “I’m sitting here because my car broke down and this is the first pay phone I came across,” I explained to Robbie.

      As expected, Robbie brightened as soon as he heard I was having car trouble. Sprites are good at fixing things and generally enjoy doing it. Robbie, in particular, loved cars – the older, the better. My old hunk of junk was his favorite kind of challenge: old, rare, and way past its life expectancy. “Would you like me to take a look at it?” asked Robbie, trying to sound casual. I almost laughed.

      “If you want to,” I told him with a shrug of my own. “It’s a mile or so down this road, parked on the shoulder. If you can get it running, I’ll come get it tomorrow and bring you a treat or something.”

      “Sounds good to me,” said Robbie brightly. He tossed me a salute and took off running in the direction of my car, and as soon as he was out of sight I smiled smugly to myself. By morning my car would run better than it had in years and I wouldn’t have to sell my first born to some smarmy mechanic. Robbie’s idea of payment was a bit of scotch or a shiny trinket. I was definitely getting the better end of the deal.

      Charlie finally showed up an hour later. I stood and stretched, not in the least surprised that I could no longer feel my butt. “So, boss man, you gonna buy me breakfast for coming all the way out here?” asked Charlie as I sank into the passenger seat and closed the door.

      “Sure, as long as it’s not at that greasy spoon you love so much,” I said, making a face that stated clearly what I thought of the restaurant in question. “The only vegetables on that menu are ether battered and bathed in grease or developing entire civilizations of bacteria. I like my stomach too much to subject it to that. How about Jackie’s Diner?”

      “Fine,” said Charlie, a sigh implied by her tone. “What kind of real man is a vegetarian anyway? Isn’t ‘vegetarian’ an Indian word for lousy hunter?”

      “Ha ha,” I muttered. I don’t know why she was bothering to complain. Jackie’s was a lot like the greasy spoon she preferred, the main difference being that they actually had vegetables on their menu and had salads that were more than just limp lettuce and a slice of tomato. The food was also better quality, although the coffee was bad enough to make a sailor cry. I could stomach it, but Charlie could only drink it liberally dosed with creamer and with a thick layer of sugar in the bottom of the cup.

      “You know, I’d stop making fun of you if you could give me one good reason that you don’t like meat,” she said. It was an old argument so she knew I wouldn’t answer but she dug anyway. “The problem is that you do like meat, you just don’t eat it and I don’t believe you’d do something like that just to be a pain in the ass.”

      “Or maybe I do really do it to be a pain in the ass and just won’t admit it.”

      “Very funny boss.”

      “I thought it was,” I said with a shrug and a sardonic smile.

      “So, what happened at Indira’s place? Why were you there until o’dark thirty?” asked Charlie at last after we had finished our respective meals and were sitting back to slug down some coffee.

      “It’s a huge place, and the property line is way out in the woods. That’s a whole lot of ground to go over with a fine-tooth comb,” I replied.

      “Well, what did you find?” asked Charlie, impatient as always for me to get to the point. “Was it human mischief or otherworld mischief?”

      I gave her a slow smile just to aggravate her. I still owed her for the vegetarian comment, after all. After a long drink of coffee and a moment to fiddle with the coffee cup after I put it down, I finally ended the suspense. “It’s not people causing trouble. There’s something bad in that house. There’s old death splattered all over that place like bad cologne. It even gave _me_ the willies.”

      “I take it I’m going to have to make with the research?” inquired Charlie unhappily and I nodded.

      “Make with the research,” I told her, frowning. “I need to know the house’s history and I really need to know how many people died there, who they were, and of course the why and the how.”

      “Don’t ask for much, do you?” muttered Charlie. She hated doing research.

      “Just do it,” I snapped. Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t in the mood for a lengthy argument about it.

      “What’s got your boxers in a twist?” she asked, taken aback by my tone. “Is it _that_ time of the month again? I swear, you’re the only man I know that gets PMS.”

      She was right, of course. Not about the PMS, but about the time of the month. Once every month or so, usually around the new moon, my other half tries to take over. My self-control becomes tenuous at best, and my temper flares at the least little provocation. I’ve never been a big fan of the sun or bright light of any kind really, but during _that_ time I can’t bear it at all. It can be physically painful at times. My mask is also thinner at those times so that my other half can be seen glaring out of my eyes.

      How could the bad time have snuck up on me? That wasn’t like me at all. I’m usually so careful, watching the calendar and paying close attention to what day the Weather Channel says will be the new moon. Knowing myself as I do, I try to avoid human company when my control is so shaky, hence the extreme care I exercise. I can’t risk losing my temper, especially in front of witnesses. The last thing I need is somebody getting to know the real me – it would end painfully and all over the place. Some stains are just better to avoid, laundry detergent can’t work miracles.

      Suddenly worried, I got up and excused myself, claiming to need to use the restroom. I bee-lined for the bathroom, though not for the reason that was naturally assumed. I waited until the guy that was washing his hands had left then turned to take stock of myself in the water-spotted mirror. Hair so black it looked like it came out of a box, pale skin, a slightly feral look to my narrow, pointed features. Everything seemed normal, for me anyway. Then I looked at my eyes. Just barely perceptible in the black depths of my eyes was a faint light like a lit coal just barely starting to cool. It would get much, much worse as the night progressed. Checking my pockets, I let out a sigh of relief upon finding my sunglasses. They were dark and mirrored and looked like something out of the Matrix or one of the Terminator movies. They were very expensive and one of my most prized possessions; and they hid my eyes better than any pair before them.

      Donning my sunglasses I pushed my way out of the bathroom and returned to my seat. Charlie smiled smugly. She knew what the sunglasses meant. Once again, she had been right – damn the luck. “Don’t worry boss, I’ll take you home soon and you can hide out tomorrow,” said Charlie, tactfully keeping her “I told you so” to herself. “I know the routine boss. I’ll reroute your calls to the office before I go back to bed. Just remember to check in.”

      “I’ll remember,” I said, taking a large gulp of my coffee.

      We left shortly after that. Charlie dropped me off at my apartment then returned to her interrupted sleep. That night and all the next day I spent pacing my tiny living room. I tried to watch some TV, but I just couldn’t sit still. By the time I was finally calm again I was too exhausted to even see straight. I barely managed to skin out of my two-day-old clothes and fall onto the vague blur that was my bed. The following morning Charlie showed up bright and early clutching an ominously thick pile of papers stuffed into a desperately strained file folder. I made the perfunctory gesture of inviting her into my apartment, but it was pretty pointless since she had already breezed past me the second I opened the door. That’s Charlie for you. “How are you feeling today boss?” she asked as she plopped down on my beat-up couch.

      “Better,” I replied with a shrug. “You want some coffee?”

      “I’ll make some in a minute,” she said, dropping the bulging folder on the scarred surface of my second-hand coffee table. “You don’t pay me enough to drink that sludge you make.”

      “I take it the research went well?” I prompted her as I sat on the floor in front of the coffee table. Truth be told, I prefer sitting on the floor over sitting on my couch. I hate my couch, and at times I think the feeling may be mutual. It’s an ugly red monstrosity with white cabbage leaf roses. However, it was inhabiting the apartment long before I moved in, so I figured it had as much right to be there as I did. It’s the principle of the thing.

      “That place has got some serious history,” said Charlie, flipping the folder open and handing me several sheets of paper from the top of the stack. “It started in 1932. The man who built the house was a total nut job. His wife and son died from some kind of illness or something just after the house was built. The guy, Walter Delner, went over the edge from grief and started kidnapping women and young boys. All the women had long blond hair like his wife. All the boys were blond and the same age his son had been when he died. He’d torture them for weeks then cut their throats and dump them in the basement to rot.”

      “Sounds like a sure recipe for a haunting,” I murmured, thinking out loud.

      “Wait, it gets better,” said Charlie as she rifled through the papers for the next chapter of the gruesome tale. “In 1951, a family of five bought the house. The wife, Nina Crum, noticed something was wrong right away. A couple of months after moving in, she started hiring psychics and mediums to figure out what was up. She kept swearing she heard the sound of children screaming and it was keeping her awake at night. All three of the Crum children died in mysterious accidents in and around the house in the two years that followed. The wife killed herself after the littlest one died. She hung herself from a beam in the basement. The husband followed soon after, shooting himself in the nursery.

      “And there’re more deaths after that. In 1959, a young couple was murdered in their beds by a crazed drifter. In 1965, a family of four was killed by a gas leak. In 1974, two roofers were knocked off the roof by a frightened flock of birds and just so happened to be impaled on thick branches. In 1978, a squatter used it as headquarters for his little killing spree. That was the last resident of the house until Indira bought it a few months ago.” Charlie had handed me the last of the papers from the pile and I scanned them quickly, deciding I could read the details later if I needed to. Usually the minor details weren’t all that important. What was important was that someone, or in this case a whole lot of someone’s, had died in such a manner that an unsettled spirits were left behind to cause trouble. Or at least, it should have been spirits. That was the baffling bit.

      Violent death leaves behind a residue like soap scum in the place where it occurred, a sort of emotional and spiritual stain that tends to upset anyone sensitive enough to detect it. Usually such places are infested with the spirits of those that died in that spot. They’re drawn irresistibly to that residue. When a ghost of violent death is exorcised or moves on to the other side, the waxy build-up of death goes with it. It’s possible to find a place haunted by spirits that doesn’t have that residue, but the reverse just wasn’t possible. You couldn’t have that waxy build-up of death without the dead person to slap on the wax. It’s like a sandwich with nothing inside – all bread, no meat. It made no sense, especially given that Indira’s house had such a strong resonance of violent death, not to mention a history that would make Hitler need a night light. The place should have been lousy with ghosts.

      “So, what now, boss?” asked Charlie, stuffing the papers back into the folder.

      “I think I need to take another look at Miss Saski’s house,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Besides, I need to pick up my car.”

      The distance to Indira’s house seemed weighted with foreboding. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was walking into a trap. Something bad was about to go down at Indira’s and we were about to step right in the middle of it. I hate going into situations blind, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do but dive in and get it over with. I could only hope that this wasn’t going to be another case of diving in only to discover there’s no water in the pool. It wouldn’t be the first time I had plunged head long into something unfortunate, but that didn’t mean I wanted an encore. In my line of work stupid mistakes can be painful, and repeating them can be deadly.

      We arrived at Indira’s house at last and I insisted that Charlie let me take the lead. Everything appeared to be quiet, but that didn’t mean much when the things causing the trouble were, more often than not, invisible. I took the porch steps two at a time and opened the door without bothering to knock – no sense giving myself a chance to change my mind about going in. I barely set foot inside the door when I was assaulted by a shrieking blur leaping at me from just past the range of my peripheral vision. I turned to dodge the attack, but I wasn’t quick enough and agony exploded in my shoulder. I howled, as much from outrage and surprise as pain. I’m tougher than I look, and it takes a lot to knock me down. Indira leapt back, her brown eyes round and frightened and her face a study in confusion. “Oh my god!” she cried. “I’m so sorry! The doors kept rattling and I was so scared! We need to call 9-1-1! I’m really sorry!”

      “Shut up,” I snarled, struggling to regain control. It was hard to even think about control with my shoulder screaming at me, but I had to stay calm or I would never get Indira to calm down. Charlie shoved past me and we both looked down at the front of my shoulder a few inches above my right bicep. Sticking out of the middle of a spreading red-brown stain on white cotton was a trowel. It was just under my collar bone – any lower and we would have been in serious trouble “All right, I’m impressed. I can honestly say, I never would have thought a trowel could actually be used to stab somebody. Somebody ought to call the records people.”

      “Very funny, boss,” said Charlie with shaky sarcasm. She turned to Indira, her eyes afire with the first sparks of anger.

      “Um, can we find somewhere to sit please?” I asked, moving to stand between the two women.

      “Yeah, of course, I’m sorry,” said Indira, shaking her head dazedly. “I’m so sorry about this. I didn’t know who or what was coming in. But the doors have been rattling off and on all day and I was really getting freaked out. Then you came in and I… I’ve never hurt anyone before in my life. I didn’t even know I had it in me. I’m so sorry.” Tears were spilling down her cheeks as she led us through the house to what would be the dining room once it was furnished. She unfolded three cheap metal chairs and gestured vaguely for Charlie and me to have a seat. She sat with us, wringing her hands the whole time with her eyes fixed on the trowel still sticking out of my shoulder. “We should call 9-1-1. I need to find my phone.”

      She started to get up, but I forestalled her with one raised hand. “Just calm down, Miss Saski. It would be more useful to find a first aid kit and a towel before we do anything else.”

      “Yes, yes, of course,” she said, getting up with a new purpose to focus her. Charlie looked at me as though I had grown a second head.

      “Charlie, why don’t you help me with my jacket?” I suggested politely to her. She nodded slowly then got up and moved to stand behind me. Unlike Charlie, I knew that what had happened wasn’t Indira’s fault. She had been under the influence of the same power that had destroyed so many people down through the decades. I could feel it, my injury having made me a part of the house’s drama. It was closer to the surface than it had been before, more overtly malevolent. No doubt Charlie could feel it too, but being a normal human being she couldn’t differentiate between outside influences and the secret murmuring of her own mind.

      I didn’t know whether it was good luck or bad that my leather jacket was undamaged. The thick, stiff leather might have protected me from the trowel. However, given that the house had made it possible for the trowel to be used as a deadly weapon at all, it might not have done any good. Worst case scenario, I still would have been injured _and_ my leather jacket would have been ruined. I can handle terrible wounds, but a wounded leather jacket would have been too much.

      Indira returned with the first aid kit, setting it down on the floor then kneeling in front of me. “Should we pull it out?” she asked tremulously.

      “Hell yes,” I said with feeling. It wasn’t in deep, and I knew the wound would hurt a lot less without the metal jiggling around every time I moved or breathed. Both women looked at the protruding tool, both of them obviously reluctant to be the one to touch it. With a wordless growl of impatience, I reached up and gripped the wooden handle. A sharp jerk and small whimper saw me free of the thing, though the effort left my head spinning. “Towel please,” I requested as dispassionately as a surgeon asking for a scalpel. I pressed the towel against the suddenly gushing wound and grabbed Charlie’s hand, pressing it hard against the towel. “Don’t let go. Indira, pull up a chair for her so she can be more comfortable then have a seat before you fall over. You’re looking a bit green about the gills.”

      “I’ve never stabbed anyone before. I don’t think I like it much,” she said with a wan smile that bordered on genuine.

      It took some time to get the bleeding to slow down, and while we waited I told Indira the horrible history of the house she was purchasing. Her face, normally the color of cappuccino, became almost as pale as my own during the long recitation of grisly deaths. By the time I had finished rattling off everything I knew and suspected, it was time to apply mass amounts of gauze and tape to my shoulder. I took some of the generic aspirin that was in the first aid kit then got to my feet. Charlie caught my arm as I swayed, but I was quick to regain my equilibrium. I had been hurt worse and had been in far more physically demanding situations when it happened. I couldn’t afford to sit on my butt. There was work to be done.

      “We really ought to take you to the hospital boss,” said Charlie unhappily.

      “No,” I told her flatly as I carefully shrugged back into my jacket. “I don’t do hospitals. Besides, I can feel something happening here and I don’t like it one bit.”

      I stretched my senses outward, cautiously seeking the source of the feeling of _wrongness_ that hung in the air. It seemed to be gathering power to itself far beyond what it had previously been able to draw. I didn’t need to find it to know where it was getting its newfound power. It was feeding on blood, and not just any blood, my blood. My blood which contained the power of demons. I could also sense a terrible thwarted rage. Apparently blood, no matter how strong, was not enough. It needed a sacrifice of spirit as well. All the people that had died before had been devoured, blood and soul. Whatever it was that was making use of the house had intended the same for me. I hated to disappoint the thing, but I was no one’s tasty treat.

      Using my senses, both mundane and other, I followed the trail of my own shed blood. It couldn’t be seen by the naked eye, but I could smell it and taste its tang on the air. I could also sense it in the back of my mind, an invisible flaw just below the surface of the newly refinished wood floors. Down the trail I went, and down again until we came to a hatch in the laundry room floor. Presumably the hatch led to a basement. “How cliché can you get?” I sneered. “Ooo, evil nasty thing in the basement. Let’s just break out the ditzy blonds and twisted ankles while we’re at it. Talk about B movie.”

      “Please don’t make fun of the bad thing in the basement,” pleaded Charlie softly from just behind me.

      Sighing, I opened the hatch – not an easy thing to do one-handed. Naturally the basement was pitch dark, but the smell it gave off wasn’t in the least what one would expect to find wafting out of a musty cellar. It was the smell of sulfur and burned meat, smoke and things far more ghastly. In that moment, I knew what was happening. The memories the scent brought to the fore of my mind weren’t exactly the warm and fuzzy kind. I wanted to warn the girls to get away, but my brain was unwilling to produce anything more useful than the phrase “Oh crap” repeated over and over again.

      I had to take a deep breath to steady myself before I could put so much as a toe through that hatch. My inner coward was shrieking at me about the inherent stupidity of entering a dark, demon-scented basement that might possibly contain an opening to the demonic plane. My inner hero, however, was blowing a big wet raspberry at the inner coward. I had never let a client down, and I wasn’t about to start. Indira wasn’t a bad sort, for all that she had just stabbed me with a spackling utensil, and she didn’t deserve to be left holding the bag when that bag included a burgeoning aperture to the modern concept of hell. But sometimes I think my inner hero is a bit of a loudmouth and really ought to learn to keep his mouth shut.

      “You two need to stay up here,” I said, the top half of my body not yet submersed in the heavy underground darkness. “If you hear screaming, or rather if you hear me screaming, then head for the cars and get out of Dodge. Neither of you are capable of handling this. Charlie, you know what to do. If I can’t hack it, call Shiro.”

      “Yes, boss,” she said, all but saluting. “If you go boom call Shiro. Scram when the screaming starts. Got it boss.”

      Lacking a flashlight and uncertain if my wavering courage was up to waiting for Indira to find one, I dug into my industrial size jacket pockets in search of something that might serve. My pockets weren’t the tiny standard that most leather jackets boasted. I had increased their size to more than twice the original girth, and had added more pockets in the sleeves and inside lining. I’ve learned in life that you can never have too many pockets, nor can you have too many nasty tricks hidden in them- and I had loaded for bear before heading to Indira’s. All I came up with, for all my digging, was a stone that gave off a faint glow whose radius was disproportionate to its brightness. In other words, it cast a wide circle of barely adequate light, but it was better than nothing.

      Aside from the smell, there was nothing that jumped out at me as being _wrong_ with the room. On a hunch I hid the stone in my pocket and that’s when I saw it. It was like smoke billowing out of a doorway that was only open a crack, but the smoke itself didn’t look like normal smoke. It seemed to give off its own kind of macabre luminescence, red-tinged and glittering in defiance of the lack of light to reflect. I pulled out the stone again and found my way to the wall. Something was glittering besides the creepy smoke. I touched a finger to the aged bricks and it came away wet. A brief sniff revealed the moisture to be a tiny bead of blood. The walls were apparently sweating blood.

      “Just what I needed, another horror movie cliché,” I muttered.

      A deep growl rolled through the room, reverberating through my body and setting my heart to racing at an abusive pace. The overall menacing feeling that had permeated the rest of the house before was nothing to the nerve-screaming terror that was slowly seeping into the basement, carried on the appallingly thick smell of blood and death the way pollen is carried on the wind. Something was coming through, something better kept out of this world. It felt vast and terrible and undeniably hungry. I had no intention of being its first meal. I had to slam the door before it could jimmy it open any further.

      I knew the words to use to close down the door and banish the demon climbing out of it. I also knew that speaking them was going to hurt. Wounded and weakened, there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to put enough power into the words to get the job done. While I debated with myself, I could only watch the opening slowly widening, a deep red glow silhouetting enormous black arms, heavily muscled and riddled with veins like serpents protruding from the satin-slick surface of jet black skin. Just the sight of those massive arms was enough to make me want to retreat to a corner to whimper. But isn’t it always the way of things that if I was to run screaming there would be no one else that could get there in time to pick up the slack? Oh well, self-preservation is great but bold stupidity makes life more interesting.

      I shifted my stance, bracing myself with my feet apart and my spine straight as a ruler. Holding up both hands, palms toward the widening gap in reality, I called out the first words of the banishing spell. Power snapped into focus within me then flashed outward through my arms to concentrate in my hands. The next words felt like gravel leaving my throat, and my hands began to flare with a harsh radiance. My whole body burned even as ice surged through my veins. My hands were so cold I could no longer feel them, but it was too late to stop. I didn’t think I could pick it back up if I stopped. As if reading the hopeless thought, the demon reached out one claw – a single claw was all it took – and lashed me across the middle. The force of the blow threw me back against the wall with an awful crunch. Something was definitely broken, but there was no time to figure out what. By some miracle, my hands were still raised and close enough to being in position as to make no nevermind. All I had to do was get to my feet and finish the incantation.

      Rising to my feet at that moment was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. An agonizing inch at a time, I got back into place. As the strength of my human half ebbed, the power of my other half waxed brighter. It poured liquid flames through my frozen limbs, the heat painful enough to make me cry out. The new pain only served to stoke my temper. A smile sharper than broken glass stretched across my face. With vicious abandon, I flung the final words of the spell at the opening. They hit the door and sliced into the demon with the kind of merciless violence it would never have suspected of a puny half-breed like me. It had no idea who it had just pissed off. As a final vindictive touch, I cast another spell at the demon that was still screaming just out of reach of the door. The demon was going to get a nasty surprise very soon, and even the thought of it brought a new smile of vicious amusement to my sweat-soaked face.

      With the demon unable to fight against the door’s closing, I changed my stance and prepared the next spell. My energy was faltering but my determination was stronger than ever. I could sense something stronger and more cunning than the first demon approaching the door like a dog running toward the scent of steak. Worse, the new presence was a little too familiar for my liking. I spoke the words taught to me by my mother’s journal, the book that she had never meant me to have. My throat was completely raw from the first two spells, so it was essentially my own stupid fault that I was barely able to croak out the last words of the final spell.

      All at once the blood-red aperture crashed closed, taking its ominous smoke and hideous smells with it. Sagging to the floor, I breathed a sigh of relief that ended in a gasp of pain. It was time to lick my wounds and recount a much edited version of the tale of my heroism to the girls. I emerged from the basement, only to discover that the girls had headed for the hills. I suppose when I screamed Charlie, being Charlie, had dutifully followed my instructions and buggered off. Peeking out the window I saw that both cars were gone. Just my luck.

      Regardless, I didn’t want to be in that house a second longer. The sun was just setting and the breeze was cool but not cold; overall, not bad conditions for a walk in the country. As I set out I contemplated the house and the door to the demonic plane that had almost taken over its basement. I theorized that once upon a time, somebody with more power than sense had tried and failed to summon a demon. The failed spell had been enough to bust a crack in the walls that exist between this reality and the other planes that exist all around it. Having missed a perfectly good chance to break free, the demon in question had turned failure into opportunity using the crack to leak evil influence into the world in good old demon fashion. The rest, as they say, was history.

      And so it seemed I was to end the case as I began it, walking down a dark farm road. The only difference was the pain of my progress. My injuries, though not numerous, were distracting. My only comfort was that I was at least walking toward a fixed car instead of away from a broken one. Well, that and the fact that the client had paid in advance. The thought of money in the bank was enough to put a little spring in my step. Remembering that I would have to use all that money for first aid supplies and rent took the spring right out again. Oh well, I never ask for a happy ending. They give me cavities. And besides, it could have been worse. It could have been raining.

**Author's Note:**

> And thus I have appeased Whiny McNaggenstein . . . for now. *whew* 
> 
> For those who are interested in the next story in the series, I promise I'll post first chance I get. However, I'm neck deep in four other projects as well as my multitude of novels, so it might be a few days since I want to double-check for typos and such before posting (this is not a guarantee that there won't be errors, since I'm sort of the unofficial Queen of Typo and grammatical errors seem to stalk me, but I'm gonna give it my best shot). Believe it or not, the second story is better than this one (in my humble opinion anyway), and it's a little bit longer. Hope you had fun reading! ^_^


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